Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Old Masters Facing the Wall



An idea for a different kind of art exhibition:

A South African museum is to exhibit 17th century Dutch master paintings all hung facing the wall.
Curator Andrew Lamprecht said the "Flip" exhibition opening in Cape Town next month was "a conceptual art intervention" on one of the country's premier art collections.
"They'll all be flipped, to completely take the space and turn it into something new and unexpected," he said. The Michaelis Collection at Cape Town's Old Town House includes works by Dutch and Flemish masters such as Frans Hals, Jan Steen and Anthony van Dyck, and is seen as one of the best of its kind outside the Netherlands.
Mr Lamprecht said the exhibition would force gallery goers to reconsider their preconceptions about the art and its legacy in South Africa.
"I'm asking questions about the history," he said, adding that the reverse of the paintings revealed a wealth of detail not normally on view to the public, ranging from old attempts to preserve the canvas to notes from different collectors over the years.


Interesting. I probably would go there, pay the admission fee, and then throw a terrible temper tantrum when I find out that there's nothing to see but the paintings' buttocks. But it's still interesting as an idea. We could expand this to everything that has to do with art. And on a much more humble level, we bloggers could show you only the rejects and things like my daily get-going freeform writing pages:

What is thepurposeoflifeoh whyohwhyoh why oh did I everleave Ohio??????Not tht i ever wenttoOhiointhe firstplace but, but, BUt WHat IF ihad been to Ohio and was educated so different so succulent so permanent so corpulent? Should I write about the flesh and the wayofallflesh...


And this links nicely to a new article in the Women's Enews about the freedom blogging gives to women. I sort of agree, but freedom of speech is not the same as someone listening. Not at all. And then there is the whole thorny question of freedom from listening which I sometimes really yearn for in this country of the octopus media. Still, women do deserve to be heard more, and especially very erudite and funny goddesses who suffer from heatrash.